Digital Financial Reporting

Note that this paper is now downloadable for free here.

In a paper, Data and Technology: Transforming the Financial Information Landscape, the CFA Institute outlines their vision of a broader and deeper use of structured data in financial reporting.  The paper, which looks at what the CFA Instutute calls the "currently inefficient system" of financial reporting from end-to-end.

In the paper, the CFA Institute calls for structuring data earlier:

"Structuring data early in the process would not only benefit companies but would also allow auditors to use audit data analytics to make the audit more efficient and potentially provide users with a better quality and greater granularity of financial information with greater reporting frequency and possibly a higher level of assurance."

The paper can be purchased from Amazon.com for $9.99. It is worth purchasing and reading.

To better understand the efficiencies of structured data of an XBRL-based digital financial report, see my Conceptual Overview of an XBRL-based, Structured Digital Financial Report.

But what about all those quality issues in XBRL-based public company financial filings to the SEC? Employ business rules correctly and not only will the quality problems go away; THAT is how the effeciencies the CFA Institute mentions will be realized.  The benefits of structured data are real! When you understand the details, you understand that structured data can work.